Collaboration involves the ability for each member in a group of members, called “collaborators” to automatically transmit information to, and receive information from, other collaborators in the group. In order to facilitate such collaboration, various systems have been developed that allow such information to be transmitted between personal computer systems, communication appliances or other communication devices, including handheld and wireless devices. Collectively, these devices will be referred to a “computers” in this description.
Computer-based collaboration may occur over a network, such as the Internet, wherein each of the users is located at a computer connected to the network. Several collaboration models are currently being implemented as networked computer collaboration systems. One of these models is a “peer-to-peer” model in which direct connections are established over the network between each of the collaborator computers. Information generated by each collaborator is then sent directly to each other collaborator. In such a system, the collaborators communicate in a private “virtual” shared space. Thus, in such systems, each collaborator has a local copy of the data being collaboratively modified. In order to change the data, a collaborator generates a data change request that is forwarded to each other collaborator. The incoming data change requests are then used by each collaborator to modify its local data copy.
The latter type of collaboration system is described in detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/357,007 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ACTIVITY-BASED COLLABORATION BY A COMPUTER SYSTEM EQUIPPED WITH A COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER, filed Jul. 19, 1999 by Raymond E. Ozzie, Kenneth G. Moore, Robert H. Myhill and Brian M. Lambert; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/356,930 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ACTIVITY-BASED COLLABORATION BY A COMPUTER SYSTEM EQUIPPED WITH A DYNAMICS MANAGER, filed Jul. 19, 1999 by Raymond E. Ozzie and Jack E. Ozzie; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/356,148 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PRIORITIZING DATA CHANGE REQUESTS AND MAINTAINING DATA CONSISTENCY IN A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER SYSTEM EQUIPPED FOR ACTIVITY-BASED COLLABORATION, filed Jul. 19, 1999 by Raymond E. Ozzie and Jack E. Ozzie and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/588,195 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF XML DOCUMENTS, filed Jun. 6, 2000 by Raymond E. Ozzie, Kenneth G. Moore, Ransom L. Richardson and Edward J. Fischer.
Such a collaboration system provides a complete interactive environment for small group communications and coordination. However, in order to use such a system it is necessary for each collaborator to have a copy of a client or “transceiver” program resident on his or her computer. If the transceiver program is not available for the platform that the collaborator is using, then the collaborator cannot participate in the collaboration. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide ways of interfacing the collaborative system to other applications, environments and platforms.